A Matter of Hours: Treason at Harper's Ferry (review)

354CIVIL WAR HISTORY sassination literature in general. Too often Turner is content with a short sentence when extended discussion is in order. This is a very helpful work that could have been much better had the author not conceived of himself merely as arguing with the amateurs. Had he placed himself securely among the historians he would have produced something even better. Phillip S. Paludan University of Kansas A Matter of Hours: Treason at Harper's Ferry. By Paul R. Teetor. (Rutherford , N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982. Pp. 309. $29.50.) To accuse a man of the capital crime of treason is serious indeed. Nevertheless , that is the subject of this book which, written by a respected attorney , is a legal brief based on detailed military history. The defendant is Colonel Dixon S. Miles, U. S. Army; the incident in question is Miles's surrender of the Federal garrison at Harper's Ferry in September 1862, as Lee and McClellan were heading for a showdown at Antietam Creek. The facts in the case—at least to Teetor—are fairly simple. Miles was a Marylander and West Pointer who had spent thirty-five years in the Army. In the first major battle of the Civil War, however, he was adjudged to have been intoxicated. He was then exiled to the obscurity of the Harper's Ferry post. There, in resentment and retribution, he conjured up "a deliberate purpose ... to deliver Harper's Ferry to the Rebels, one way or the other." When Lee's army invaded Maryland and "Stonewall" Jackson's forces moved on the Ferry, Miles mismanaged his defenses atrociously and then hoisted the white flag after a short and desultory fight. Miles was killed in the final artillery exchange. Teetor asserts that the colonel met his death from a shell fired in anger by one of his own gunners. Page after page here builds a massive case against Miles. The author constructs a mountain of circumstantial evidence, to which is added a little innuendo and a lot of supposedly hidden meanings in official dispatches . Yet the basic legal fact seems to be missing. In 1807, Chief Justice of the Supreme CourtJohn Marshall decreed that treasonable intent is not treason. Rather, an overt act, corroborated by at least two witnesses , is necessary for treason to be established. Following the Harper's Ferry surrender, a Federal military commission concluded that Miles had acted with "incapacity amounting almost to imbecility." That is undeniable; and Miles may well have been incompetent , shortsighted, derelict in duty, overly fond of the bottle, petulant , and less than respectful of his superiors. Yet all of these weaknesses combined do not and cannot constitute treason. Prosecutor Tee- BOOK REVIEWS355 tor has presented an impressive and exhaustive case, but the magnitude of the charge leaves at least one juror unconvinced. James I. Robertson, Jr. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Olive Branch and Sword: The Compromise of 1833. ByMerrillPeterson. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. Pp. 132. Cloth, $15.00.) Love of Order: South Carolina's First Secession Crisis. By John Barnwell . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Pp. x, 258. Cloth, $25.00.) Olive Branch and Sword is based on the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures given at Louisiana State University in 1980. It actually offers little new material on the background ofnullification or on the formulation of the compromise. There is also a certain imbalance in the presentation. While admitting that Henry Clay's tariff measure succeeded "only because Jackson wielded the sword behind him," the volume devotes much more space to the olive branch part of the compromise than to Jackson's Force Bill. Clay thus emerges as a more"masterful strategist" (p.84) than some students might allow. More new material is to be found in the third lecture. Here are drawn together the varied perceptions contemporaries had of the compromise during the following decade. The greatest value of the work lies in the many wise judgments historians have come to expect of Merrill Peterson. Resisting the temptation to claim long-run influences for the compromise reaching to the Civil War, he reminds us that such events are too...